


Ravel

by ArchaeopteryxDreams



Series: Stories of Aligare [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Accidental Relationship, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Elemental Magic, F/M, Interspecies Romance, Motherhood, Non-Human Humanoid Society, Original Universe, POV Nonhuman, Polyamory Negotiations, Romantic Friendship, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Storytelling, Teaching, Unintentional innuendo, Utopia, finding one's place, local mom meets hot dragon bard and her husband is OK with it, supportive communities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25438834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchaeopteryxDreams/pseuds/ArchaeopteryxDreams
Summary: Aster has everything her insectoid people hold dear: a home to be the matriarch of, a dear husband, children, and skill in her weaving trade. She's never had any need to leave her village. But then she meets Llarez, a charming and worldly storyteller who flies where he pleases. And when a misunderstanding makes Llarez think Aster is propositioning him, Aster begins to question whether having what she's supposed to want is actually enough.
Relationships: Original Character/Original Character/Original Character, Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Series: Stories of Aligare [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1803451
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ravel (A Story of Aligare) was first posted in 2011, as an ebook under a different pen name. This foreword in Chapter 1 is some newly written introductory matter; Chapter 2 and onward is the original Ravel story, which cannonballs right into the human-free world.

First, an introduction.

Far away, there is a world like Earth, though it has never been walked upon by humans. This star-tossed planet lost its sun long ago and its surface is mostly dark and cold — except for a dome of magical energy that envelops and keeps warm a realm's worth of land. This place is guarded by beings of great magical power. It has plentiful plants, animals, and elemental magics . And it has no name: the land is simply called "the land" by its people, and they have never met outsiders who might question it.

The people of the land are themselves magical -- like any living being on this world, people's casting energy is as vital as their blood. Each is born with an innate elemental alignment, although with hard work and study they can all learn to wield other elements. The people of the land have no countries or governments: they live in mixed-race towns, sharing with one another their resources and their unique skills. They have never known war or prejudice. The korvi, aemets, and ferrin of the land have never seen each other as anything but friends.

Aemets are a betweenkind people, with traits of both mammals and insects. They stand on two feet, and have two arms with blunt-nailed hands. Aemets have two curved antennae, and they mostly have internal bones except for the pillbug-like shell plates on their backs that function as a spine. They possess plantcasting magic, airsense (a tactile awareness of nearby air, plus whatever the air is touching), and a lifespan of approximately 50 years. Though often nervous and superstitious, aemets are often skilled farmers and craftspeople, those people who form the productive core of any community. Almost always, aemets become anxious when alone -- although aemet hermits are not unheard of, either.

Korvi are a dragonkind people, with traits of both reptiles and birds. They are the tallest and strongest race, standing on two feet and using their lizard-like tails as a stabilizing third leg. Korvi have two horns on their crocodilian heads, two arms with clawed hands, and a pair of feathered wings on their backs. They possess firecasting magic, excellent eyesight, great physical resilience, and a lifespan averaging 200 years. Although most korvi are best at flying between towns and performing service and entertainment work, some fare better at tolerating mining conditions or fighting off wild predators.

Ferrin are a mammalian people, physically similar to Earth weasels (although more similar in diet and behaviour to squirrels). They are the smallest race, approximately the size of a domestic Earth cat, covered with fur in shades of white, grey and black. Ferrin walk on two feet or four, whichever is most convenient, and use their small-thumbed forepaws as well as their teeth to hold tools. They possess electricasting magic, keen hearing and sense of smell, and a lifespan of approximately 20 years — and most ferrin retain a child-like affinity for learning through their entire lives. Their short lives often prevent them from being great masters at any one subject, but no one makes a more devoted assistant than a ferrin.

The following stories speak of aemets, korvi and ferrin navigating their circumstances, and learning their own personal truths. Illnesses, natural disasters, and bad luck descend onto good people, and folk support their neighbours through it all. Being a good person is not always a straightforward task, but the three peoplekinds consider it vital. And once life's challenges are overcome, they become stories for other folk to take solace in, or learn from.

This is one such story.


	2. Chapter 2

_Where the earth gives strength_

_Where the sky gives breath_

_Where the waters purely flow_

_Where we love and strive_

_In between kind friends_

_By grace of green we grow_

-An aemet song of providence

* * *

When Aster was a child, her shell still as thin as sapling bark, she once stood looking at the polegrass fields. Leaves waved as far distant as she could see. Air laced between those leaves, enough undulating motion to make Aster sense the truth of how small she was. She grew frightened -- as aemet children naturally did when they airsensed a vast space -- and the next sensation she knew was her mother's hands, the kind touch of the Hane matriarch. Inside a home of goddess-granted wood, surrounded by the rest of Twillhome town, Aster's family members dwelt as they had for generations. Their antennae swayed slight as they moved. This wasn't like wind-whipped plains grass at all. This was safety; this was the modest truth of Aster's life. Disappointment caked like mud between her organs and she couldn't say why.

  
  


She spent fewer and fewer hours with the broodery ferrin, leaving their eager care and learning now from adults of her own kind. Cloth patterns and weave techniques came naturally to Aster's hands. Her family smiled proud. She grew taller, and her shell segments stretched into new and firmer shape.

After more years' growth and more winds sensed, Aster was a woman with a bonding proposal to turn over in her heart. The thought of Orman's face kindled warmth inside her. Her foremothers' weaving trade would be a safe nest of cotton threads in which to raise children. All was as it should be -- she supposed this was everything Aster Hane could want.

  
  


One day -- when Aster had grown used to wearing Orman's proposal twig against her skin and grown used to calling herself a mother -- she went to the market street. Homes there were built around mere poles, not thriving trees, and the sky unfurled overhead as Aster left the forest. Dust hung in the air, turned by wooden-shoed aemet feet and the pattering paws of small ferrin. The same folk as ever filled this town. Aster only needed to find cerulas lichen for her dyes -- a supply some neighbour might have a handful of, and be willing to barter.

Then, Aster saw a shard through the crowd, a glimpse of yellow feathers. Feathers belonging to someone so tall, they could only be a korvi. Aster stopped to regard; her innards knotted, glad and curious at the sight of a traveller. She had lately thought that Twillhome town needed more dragon folk visiting -- to bring news and songs and metal-specked trinkets, to stir the air with their fan-feathered wings.

Fellow aemets shifted aside by polite fractions as Aster approached. Three dozen of their kind gathered about the dragon fellow; they looked like close-gathered oak saplings, slender and green. Antennae cut the air as folk turned to one another, murmuring. Words flowed on mouth-moist air.

The korvi stood before them. He looked relaxed there, smiling, his tail and two legs forming a rakish tripod on his red-patterned barding blanket. His build was wiry, all joints. His horns had grown barely long enough for a second bend. This, plainly, was a young wanderer. He unhooked a tonebox from his pants waistband, its dented metal scooping the light. Unhurried, the korvi rubbed an apparent smudge from the tonebox's surface. Some measure of time passed behind his eyes; anticipation needled the air. And then the korvi bowed grand, spreading his wings wide as generosity. He met his audience's eyes -- Aster's eyes, too, and for one heartbeat she knew him.

"Good day, friends." He smiled, showing every tooth in his long mouth. "My name is Llarez of Arkiere."

Llarez, a korvitongue name of crisp-rolled sound. None of the aemets in this street were capable of speaking this bard's name properly -- since the tongues in their mouths weren't dragonkind.

"I've come bearing a tale," Llarez said. He leaned back onto his muscular tail, perching on himself. "Not a tale too heavy to fly with, but still sizeable."

Dark ink stood out on this young man's horns. Aster wondered where he had the etchings done. In a Volcano town, perhaps. Somewhere different and far away. She had always wondered what the korvi tunnel-towns were like -- surely grand places lit with firelight, the air weighted with coals' heat.

His fingers curled precise, Llarez began tapping claws against the tonebox, and musical vibrations ran wave after wave through the waiting air. Meter paced out his voice as he spoke of the greatest bard who ever told a tale. A korvi fellow strong enough to flap her wings for long strings of days. A fellow who slaked her thirst by turning her face to the sky and catching raindrops. The story details painted an old woman in Aster's mind -- someone who had been everywhere and now had a knowing gleam in her eyes.

"And I met her beside an inn hearth, over hot cups of cherry mull," Llarez said proud. "A Great One must have granted me luck that day! That bard told me four tales, and even such a piddling scrap of her knowledge let me see the real tenements of spirit." He paused, letting a melody wander free of the tonebox. "Have you ever wondered why some folk travel so much?"

Aster had never thought to ask why. She did wonder how to travel. She wanted to know how some people seemed able to follow the wind, light as dandelion seeds.

"It's because when the gods shape a person," Llarez replied, "there's sometimes a mote of clay left over. Enough to make a pinch of sand that runs down that person's back -- so they always have an itch there's no scratching. It's worse on korvikind. We itch all up and down our wings, you see, and neither hands nor horns will reach."

Llarez paused, watching the sky while his thoughts brewed. His tapping fingers slowed. Ferrin shapes edged closer through the thicket of aemet legs, their ears raised to catch sound; Aster pulled her attention away from airsense and back toward the spoken tale.

"I can't say," Llarez admitted, "why the bard chose me that day. But she storied me for hours! Talked until the mull went cold and the innkeeper swept dead ashes from the hearth pit, and then she didn't ask so much as an acorn in return. Her last tale spanned two hundred years, from the moment she cracked her eggshell and saw evening darklight, to earlier that very day when she brought a lost child back to her family. And at the end of that tale, that bard told me that there was always something in the land worth seeing."

The tonebox rhythm changed, repeating a three-note sequence that sounded like questions to Aster's ear. Llarez squinted, perhaps looking for his own meaning in the air.

"There's always something to be found, and something to grow richer by. That makes sense to me! It gives mortal folk a reason to wander. It even gives the gods reason to wander. If there's always something to see," and he opened his wings to frame his words, "folk like me will keep flying about! Even though they could make a perfectly marvelous living weaving cloth, or mixing brandy or somesuch."

Aster couldn't imagine this talkative fellow being much good at weaving cloth. The quietude would crush him.

"There always is and always will be a new sight to behold. We folk just need to point our eyes in the right direction."

The crowd found that a fine moral: they hummed a chord of newfound satisfaction. Straightening taller, fluffing his feathers, Llarez took air into his chest for a new tale's beginning.

And Aster straightened her tunic, the weft threads as familiar under her fingers as the day she had laid them. She decided she could spare a few more moments to listen. Surely, her home could fare without her.

As the Great Gem's light shifted colour, turning a midday shade of goldenrod yellow, Llarez told tales of korvi rascals and fools and geniuses. People who travelled on their wings anytime the urge struck, anytime their story pulled in a new direction. Morally speaking, their choices sounded like the right ones to make. Those legend-gilded folk never regretted leaving a place behind; there wasn't enough regret to taint their stories, at any pace. There had to be thousands of such travellers spread over the aeons. For bards to never run out of stories, dozens of people must have been making choices in this same moment that Aster stood listening.

The crowd had rippled and transformed by then, with neighbours drifting away to their daily habits and other neighbours approaching to replace them. Aster considered the colour of the daylight-washed dust at her feet and urged herself to turn away -- but then Llarez spoke a final-sounding phrase and folk murmured satisfied. The tales were over for now. A resounding voice was absent from the dry Twillhome air.

People left in rivulets around Aster. She stood in place, numbed by thought and by all the new tales she hoped to remember. Before her, Llarez bowed, a motion practiced and oil-smooth. He eyed the token payments gathered along the edge of his performing blanket: shards of raw metal; green forest plums; a thumb-sized quartz stone; some of Gloverly's biscuits wrapped in a cotton rag. And Llarez was pleased enough to smile.

As he knelt to take his earnings, Aster stood there conspicuous in the open air. She ought to get back to her weaving, but the croaking sounds of the loom had never storied her about new places. She mustered herself inside. She approached the blanket's edge.

"Did all of that truly happen, good sir?"

"Sir?" Llarez shot a look at her, his grin trickling upward. His eyes were a serene, cool grey that clashed with the rest of his colouring. "I think I'm a mite young to be called sir!"

He wasn't Aster's kin by number of years. How foolish of her to suppose otherwise. Llarez of Arkiere was surely thirty years old, or forty, or fifty. Some measure of time that made an aemet wither with age, but let a korvi only begin their bountiful long life. Aster felt her own antennae in the air and her chitinous edges under her clothing -- beacons marking her a green creature.

"Good Arkiere, then," she added. "Would that be all right?"

"Or simply Llarez." He stood, soaring up to full height. "Or Larez. That's close enough, truthfully!"

Aster couldn't imagine answering to a mispronunciation, a name not quite hers. She was only grateful that such small favours clinched the peoplekinds together.

"Well," she said, "I'm Aster Hane. One version of name only."

"One is plenty," Llarez replied like a glad punchline. Inside his cargo pouch, he arranged metal and trinkets into a platform for the plums and the fresh-soft biscuits, which he laid down with reverent care. He paused to cast a questioning eye up at Aster. "Is there something else you'd like of me?"

Aster's voice caught in her throat. She supposed she could use a korvi's ample strength, if only to lift her loom frame apart for a little upkeep. She wanted answers, too. Like she was one of those story folk dragged about by curiosity.

"I only wanted to ask: is it true what you said? That all kinds can have a little sand itching at their back?"

"I imagine it's true! I've had only spoken with a scant portion of the people who've ever lived, though." Llarez stepped off his performance blanket, folded it oddly, and knotted it around his neck. "If I chance upon a god," he said, "I'll be sure to ask if I'm speaking the unbound truth."

There his performance blanket hung, around his neck in a limp pennant. Dancingly vivid colours melded with the cotton fiber some aemet must have grown. And some aemet surely created that twistlock weave pattern.

"Well, then," Aster said. "If you learn any tales from the gods, I'd be delighted to hear them."

A grin dazzled over Llarez, from his snout down to his fanning wings. "Of course, Aster! The next time I visit this bend of the woods, I'll be sure to tell you."

Aster had sparkflies in her stomach, all of a sudden, and a heady sense of possibility. Without thought, she said, "I have one other request, actually. Do you mind labour?"

"Not at all. But I'm not the best fellow to help you move a mountain."

"It's nothing that trying. Just a little household effort."

Of course, said the delight in Aster's mind. She could fetch good Llarez home to help with loom maintenance -- a task that needed doing anyway -- so that she could speak with the fellow even longer. How perfect.

"I could rightly help you, then," Llarez said cheerful. "For a hot meal of some variety."

"Of course," Aster said. She beckoned him to follow.

  
  


But Llarez didn't follow her -- he kept right alongside, through the wafting main-street crowds, eastward and down the longest Twillhome side street. Tree shadows flowed over them, a dark pattern of lace.

"Any variety of meal at all will do," Llarez added. "No need to make something new on my account."

"I was going to put on a fresh stewpot tonight anypace, please don't fret. Dry leftovers are no way to pay a labourer."

He tipped his head curious, a feathered fellow with bird-bright eyes. "What is it you'd like done, exactly?"

"It's a loom. Oiling a loom."

He blinked twice. The street -- garlanded with neighbours and their baskets full of ordinary shapes -- was suddenly sparse company. Maple leaves shivered overhead.

"I'm a weaver, you see," Aster added. A tightness gathered in her chest; she wondered if her solitary work was really this alien to a traveller. "And oiling all the loom pieces, well, it's ... It's easiest with another pair of hands to help."

"Ah, well. It can be!"

"And with the men of my household tending the fields, I thought you'd be a good fellow to ask."

Quiet prickled harder inside Aster's shell -- a premonition, a sense finer than air. She noticed the lift of Llarez's neck feathers and the way a sure expression wouldn't seem to settle on his face.

"That's no trouble, is it, good Arkiere?"

"Well," he said, putting on a shining smile, "I'm sure we can manage! Let's just see what we've got."

The words still rankled as Aster ushered him inside; she wondered if this was such a perfect idea after all, this borrowed korvi fellow brought into her home. Llarez's eyes caught on the ceiling thatch and he recoiled.

"Twillhome roofs are made with aemetkind in mind, I regret to say," Aster told him. She busied her hands in a storage box, making sure there were extra loom strings and bolts and balance wedges. "I hope this place isn't too uncomfortable ...?"

"Ah, the roof is no lower than a typical inn," Llarez replied, "which has space enough!" He put a more deliberate effort into standing tall, his back a curve as fine as a harp's wooden edge. "This is your home, Aster?"   
"It's my branch of the Hane family, yes. Just begun this past Sphingomonth." She still held the vivid memory of packing moss and calendula flowers between the house boards, each piece of wood a part of her household domain. Aster Hane, now with a husband and a first daughter, was stretching out her roots. "Actually," she added, "I gave extra plantcasting to the corner-trees. So that I could bind the roof a few knuckles higher. I can't say I care for close air, either."

Holding the flask of linseed oil, she turned to Llarez and found him watching her, consideration laid thick on his face. It sent sparks through Aster, the awareness of those pale eyes on her, the sensation of his lean-muscled frame within a room.

"Well, then," Aster said. Her words were brittle-sounding things. "The loom is there. I, ah. Only need you to lift the frames apart, while I oil their tracks."

The moment broke as Llarez followed her nodding gesture across the room -- to the loom, a love-worn bulk with blankets and washcloths piled beside it. Change passed over Llarez, a full-body flick of feathers Aster couldn't define.

"Oh! A weaving loom. " His smile snapped back into place. "Heh! Of course, Aster. Just show me what to do, if you'd be so kind! Truthfully, I'd regret to break anything."

The words lingered in her thoughts, while she applied oil to the loom pieces Llarez held steady in his fists. Something had sprouted here that Aster couldn't identify. The air had held a charge of strangeness; their conversation so far must have meant something that Aster herself didn't grasp.

Oil spread viscous over the precious tree wood. Llarez's hands shifted, leather-smooth korvi skin with corded muscle underneath, skin as yellow as daybright in the edge of Aster's vision. Gods, she thought, great Verdana of green: forgive Aster Hane for whatever wrong she was sensing and thinking.

"There," Aster said, reaching for a rag with oil-slick fingers, "that should do. Thank you, Larez."

He replaced the last weft frame with a dampened click. This was his eighth repetition and he had grown confident in the handling. "No trouble! I hadn't thought looms had so many fiddly bits in them."

She wanted to ask Llarez what he had been thinking, in that moment where he had said nothing and stared into Aster's whole being. She didn't ask; she only waited for him to let go of the loom frame and turn back to her, to see what his gaze would say this time.

Acid fright ran through Aster, an instant before she sensed motion -- the approach of three beloved aemet shapes through the air outside. Orman lifted the door curtain aside, dear Orman arriving home and carrying cornstalks for his family's hearth fire.

"Ah," he said, understanding pulling a smile onto him. He held the door curtain high, and clear light shafted in. "We have a guest, love?"

Rowstley followed, carrying the top leaves of the cornstalks so they wouldn't drag. Aster's brother had a way of managing the small things: he minded Briar, too, with a hand hovering gentle near the child's back.

Beside Aster, Llarez spread his wing quills and sent air currents tumbling. "I'm Llarez of Arkiere, good fellows! Or Larez, as it were. Bard, errand-runner and whatever else the Hane lady would like!"

Embarrassment burned hotter in Aster's chest; she pressed a kind smile onto her face. "He's been helping with the loom. I thought it would be best to have him help with the lifting effort."

"Much obliged," Orman replied. He laid the cornstalks down in the woodpile -- moving hesitant enough to notice, his shell plates stiff lately from long hours spent tilling. Budding season, Orman believed, was a time for work and plenty of it. "Actually, bless your thoughts twice more -- I found a sizeable stone in the south corner of the field. Knew I'd find another of the wretched things if I spent enough time searching. Larez, would you mind a little more lifting before dinner?" Orman turned a questioning gaze back to Aster. "He is getting a meal, is he not?"

"The bargain is getting more complicated all the time," she said, "but yes."

"And I wouldn't mind a bit, friends! Truthfully!" In this presence of company, Llarez had brightened, his barding energy returning like fed flames. He rubbed hurried hands on his pant legs and went to Orman's side, giving a cordial nod to Rowstley, then pausing to smile at Briar. The dear child shrank against Rowstley's leg, wide-eyed.

Ten months of life hadn't shown Briar many dragon folk. She was still speckled with moss-coloured birth spots -- still young enough to be prudently shy -- and she was unaccustomed to the air movements of a korvi, the deluge of air currents funnelled through their feathers. It wasn't a feeling much different from a field of grass. Aster could introduce that much to her daughter, in the lifetime to come.

  
  


Aster's daughter. The simple existence of that dear, small person brought the life of Aster Hane into blade-edge focus. And today, there had been a strange feeling in the Hane home, a fickleness in Aster's heart as she thought of grey eyes upon her. But she had a husband, child and responsibility. Banish her if her mind should wander.

  
  


Orman and Llarez left, and Aster was left with blood family to help her prepare a meal. The pantry box held enough thornwood root to share, and enough cress to colour the stew green. While Aster worked, Rowstley gathered the thornwood peelings and wilted cress leaves, and made sure that Briar placed them in the Middling bucket with the proper amount of reverence.

While stirring the developing stewpot, Aster told her family about the stories Llarez had shared in the market street. His talk of journeying, and the way he had fanned his wings to welcome listeners. "It sounds," Aster said, "like the good Arkiere has seen a wide swath of the land."

Rowstley added, "And he gathered up enough friendliness to share."

Humming an answer, Aster sensed ordinary cooking steam in an ordinary home. She wondered if this was the core of the matter -- whether Llarez simply had a lot to give.

  
  


Orman and Llarez returned soon enough. Even from inside, Aster could sense the dust clapped from their hands, the drifting remnants of shared work. They talked, agreeing with each other that the rootpot smelled wonderful.

It was the same rootpot preparation Aster had learned from her mother, and was now teaching Briar how to serve without scalding herself. A regular evening meal in Twillhome was now shared with their chattering visitor. Aster sat to Llarez's left side, placing a prudent span of air between her own crossed legs and his kneeling-perched presence.

"I am from Hotrock Volcano," Llarez confirmed when she asked. "The west edge of the north side! Dreadful ashworm infestations, some years, but I like the place fine enough. The ceilings are high enough to seem like a sky all their own." He put down his spoon to draw lines with his hands. "Great arched ceilings! I doubt a fellow could throw a rock that high, truthfully. I'm told it's because the jewelcrafters keep shaving stone from the walls, to get at the quartz and copper in the volcano rock. Speaking about jewelcrafters, have you folk ever heard of my family, Arkiere House?"

"I haven't," Aster said. Orman and Rowstley murmured agreement. They didn't know Llarez's kin; they knew only a few korvi, mostly the red-feathered Reyardines who loved bartering and talking about their barter.

"Oh," Llarez said. He deflated, feathers wilting against his skin. "I suppose you wouldn't have met any other Arkieres, out in this part of the land. I'm really the only one who wanders. We're jewel and metalcrafting folk, mostly, and sometimes sculpture work when someone asks to see their tales shaped in metal. If only you could see my brother's pieces!" Llarez's enthusiasm caught light again. "They're quirky pieces, you see where my wind blows? I dare say that no one has a mind like Zey of Arkiere does. Ah, no, wait -- I can show you."

Hurrying his hands, Llarez untied his cargo pouch and pulled out a knot-textured ball of string. He held it out in bowl-warm hands, the heat of his palms parting around the ball.

"What is it?" Once Aster looked closely, the ball was clearly no weaver's possession -- ragged and patchwork as it was, dozens of strings and twines snarled together in a mass of doubletwist knots. Briar shifted to see it better.

"This," Llarez said, "is the Muddle. Zey gave it to me years ago and he said there's a treasure inside. Why didn't he just give me the treasure that moment? Ah, but there'd be no intrigue in that. He said I need to untie all the knots before I can see what's inside."

"Or you could cut the strings," Orman said, one corner of his mouth tugged wry. He reached for the rootpot ladle a second time.

"Come now, good fellow," Llarez said. "There's no intrigue in cutting the strings, either! Anyone could spend two clicks of their time doing that. Unravelling each knot, though ... Well, I'm not sure it's a task for one person only. Here, Aster, give it a moment."

She laid down her scraped-clean bowl and accepted the Muddle ball -- a brush of Llarez's warm skin and then the thousand-textured puzzle was hers to hold.

"She has a way with strings," Orman said, fondness warm in his voice. "Don't leave it with her too long or she'll ruin your surprise."

"He'd have to leave it with me for years, I think." Aster found loose yarn under her fingers and followed it to one of many well-cinched knots. Llarez's brother had clearly tied much of his own time into this Muddle.

Llarez only fluffed his feathers and beamed. "It's here for the untying! I just like to share the puzzle with folk I meet. Get everyone's hands into it. That's the joy of anything, really."

  
  


Aster spent a long moment on the Muddle. Hearth coals poured their heat upward; the men talked and Briar sat listening; knots came apart under Aster's blunt-hooked fingernails. A few strings wound free of this care-tied mess and indeed, Aster wondered what the firm-feeling centre of the ball could possibly hold. She could appreciate the taste of this small intrigue.

In time, Rowstley gathered the dishes and called Briar to help clean them. Llarez fluttered, his wings stirring air into curling spires.

"It looks like you could use some water fetched, Aster! Might I help you with that?"

She suddenly noticed her homestead again, a scene of sights as well as moving air. "Ah. That would be kind of you." The nagging sensation returned, the pull toward this otherkind fellow. "Would you like an escort to our river? Dark as it is outside ..."

"That would be wonderful of you!"

And how wonderful that she had a chance to speak freely with him. Aster only needed to figure out what she meant to say.

  
  


They walked in silence, surrounded by thatch homes and the creaking of evening grassbugs. The night was calm, air stirring in their wake and churning around Llarez's swishing tailtip. Here was Aster's chance to speak -- and here also was a growing fear, a boiling-over pot of nerves she had felt before.

"I don't recall if I've said it before," Llarez tried, light as a breeze, "so thank you for the meal, Aster!"

"It was no trouble."

"Always a delight to have a hot, cooked meal after a day of flight! Since it's difficult to cook out in the wilds. Or, ah, while flying." Llarez looked to her, a turning of his long snout and angled horns. His footsteps dug clawtips into the dirt with a grinding noise too loud. "Aster ... Is there something in your mind?"

No time was riper than the present. It felt overripe, hanging thick between them.

"When you accepted my task," Aster said, with awful courage. "Today in the market street. What did you think I was offering?"

She could feel the smile spreading wry on him, a stretching of lips in the half-light. Llarez shuffled the empty water pails from hand to hand. "Was I obvious?"

"About what?"

"Obvious in thinking it over, I mean. Now that I look at it, I don't suppose you good Twillhome folk have the same turns of phrase."

He paused. Aster could sense the shape of this confusion, a mountainous presence cutting off escape.

"It was just the way you mentioned your loom--" He made useless shapes with his free hand. "There's an expression in the Volcano, and I suspect anywhere a few hundred korvi gather but I can't say for sure-- Anypace. There's a turn of phrase, oiling the loom. Suggesting that folk, ah. Get close with each other."

"Close?" Aster's hand flew to her chest. The saying made such thorough sense; it gave a tingling new layer to that moment where Llarez had eyed her, thinking, considering. Attempted words filled her mouth.

"Apologies if that was rude of me," Llarez hurried to say. His feathers stood ruffled along his backbone.

"No, it was nothing you did." She took hold of more courage. "So when I said Orman's name, you must have guessed ...?"

"To be true as earth, I still didn't know what to think." He scratched at his neck; the gesture seemed calming, smoothing air out from under his feathers. "But I thought to myself, Llarez, you've never turned tail from a new experience and let's not make this the first time. Let's at least see what Aster's got in mind. And then you pointed to your actual weaving loom and, well, that answered that."

She couldn't imagine what to say. This reality changed the flavour of everything so far, every cheerful exchange between her family and the bard she couldn't help finding interesting.

"I wouldn't--" The inability to express choked her, the uselessness of the shapes her mouth made. "It's just that, my family ... No offense meant to you, Larez."

"Oh, fret not," he laughed. "These things happen! Speak enough and the meanings will have a snarl or two somewhere."

His chuckling died away. They arrived at the river -- its surface scintillating purple in the evening dark light, the water and wind-blown leaves murmuring to fill the silence. Llarez knelt and scooped the three water pails full. He held his tail in an upward hook, placing one bucket on it so his feathers' bulk held the handle in place. The novelty held Aster's attention -- that easy way his limbs moved and bore weight. She wondered how much practice it took to carry buckets on one's tail.

They turned back toward home. In the distant fields, grassbugs sang a humming song.

"All right." Llarez looked to her in the dark, his eyes a half-hidden glittering. "Is there anyplace specific you'd like these when we get back?"

"Really," Aster said quiet, "you've been wonderful about all of this."

"They're not so heavy, truthfully! It's-- Oh. All of this." He lifted one shoulder awkward toward his head, perhaps trying to scratch an itch when he couldn't spare a hand. "Well, Aster, what I mean is ... Let me tell you a tale. I'm not barding right now so don't fuss about owing me one thing, all right?"

"All right."

They kept walking, while Llarez inhaled and readied himself. The river trees stood whispering behind them, and the town homes were a presence still enough to ignore. In the air between, Llarez began:

"Twenty-six years ago, the winds were gusting and the clouds spoke of change. There was a young fellow named Llarez of Arkiere, a korvi child barely fledged. He used to watch the merchants and messengers coming in to land on the volcano slopes, their quills spread wide and streaking colour into the golden air. It was quite a sight for someone who'd barely seen outside his House's front door! Being that he was a curious child, Llarez asked the rest of Arkiere House where all those travelling folk were coming from.

"Opens, said Llarez's mother. Or Greenway, said Llarez's father. Likely not, his brother Zey piped up -- they were bringing goods from somewhere farther away than that. Villages on the far side of the land.

"Well," Llarez said with a tip of his head. In the dark, Aster could imagine his cloud-coloured eyes prying into the distance. "Even as a child, Llarez knew that three different answers couldn't all be the exact truth. He knew, in that fate-clad moment, that he wanted to go out and learn the answer for himself. So he fanned out his wings and announced, right then and there, that he wanted to wander. When he was bigger, naturally. He wasn't much good at flight, yet, you see -- didn't have enough muscle for it."

Aster imagined she did, in the limited way that she grasped the reality of flying creatures.

"It's a funny thing," Llarez said, "trying to choose what to do. Nothing is solid enough to measure in knucklewidths. Three years after that day, Llarez of Arkiere grew tired of waiting to be sure, and he left. But he grew frightened on his first night alone. He had planned to spend a few eightyears travelling and come back as a well-storied man. But he was back in Arkiere House for dinner not one day later."

Llarez was grinning again, a slow and reluctant motion. Youth showed in his shape, his narrow arc of neck and the lean muscle of his frame. Aster walked beside him in the endless air; she supposed her age showed, too. Perhaps in her own lines of face and frame, marked with a painted trace of new motherhood.

"I've always took it to mean," Llarez said soft, "that the proof is in the porridge. That a person needs to simply try and see how things end. If that fledgling Llarez had sat in his familiar home, he would never have seen what he could do."

"Did he have any way of knowing what the world holds for a traveller? No one ... told him what needs to be done?"

"Oh, his parents told him plenty. And they took him to hear bards spinning tales, at festivals and such." Llarez waved a hand, stirring air in bent circles. "Young Llarez thought that listening to a tale was boring compared to actually seeing places for himself. Imagine that pup becoming a bard?"

Aster smiled watery. "I wouldn't have wagered."

"It takes a while for these things to percolate, I think. I always like a legend better when I've thought on it for a while. So, that's something to keep in mind, I suppose!"

She already had a thought like that in her mind. In the greater Hane household, Aster had woven images of each Legend Creature; she held that memory under countless warm others. Those pictures of mighty Creatures were her first weavings, a crafted wish for the land's guardians to have line and form. Told words couldn't replace the feeling of real shapes, and air touching textures.

Aster had a thought on her tongue now, after her heart had hammered enough. But Llarez shifted the water pails in his grasp and fell quiet, and the Hane home's doorway threw ever more light toward them. She wished so hard to agree with Llarez. But she simply couldn't make herself speak again.

  
  


Orman, thankfully, had composed a sensible bargain by the time they returned.

"Eight cups plus a handful," he said. "Keep it dry and you'll have food on hand for a stormy day. No, no, don't fuss, Larez -- you've done plenty. I can grow this much corn in the space that rock used to be." He took one of Llarez's long-boned hands, pressing it around a pouch filled taut with corn kernels.

"Ah, you folk are too generous." Llarez beamed, his wings twitching open and resettling. "Thank you, truly! I'll tell tales of your generosity flowing like festival whiskey. But I really must be off, much later and I'll wake the innfolk."

Aster brought the Muddle ball to add to his cargo pouch. "Thank you for everything, and for your patience. And for showing me this ball to try my patience. I can see it being an odd sort of soothing once you're used to it."

"I'll tell you what treasure is inside the Muddle, once I find out myself! I can stop back here and pass along the news."

"If it's no trouble."

"None at all!"

With fellow aemets tickling her airsense, Aster gave Llarez his puzzle ball. She brushed once more against his fire-warm skin; he smiled down at her, wearing deep shadows, gleaming warm in his eyes.

And then the air stirred and Aster was watching his feathered back retreating. Watching someone she wished she didn't find so magnetic -- because she knew better, she knew where her line of sight belonged. Sensation blazed on her hands where otherkind skin had touched her.

Llarez paused inside the door, its curtain draped on his arm. "And if you'd ever like to make another request of me, Aster? Ask anything."

Her heart seized. Llarez smiled and left, stirring away into the purple night.

Everyone could tell what happened, said a fear voice in Aster's ear. The air around her felt suspect, soaked with the things she was thinking.

"Aster," Orman asked. He paused, considering air currents. "Is something wrong?"

She shoved her first few answers deeper into herself: there was no sense raising a gale over one small whim lodged in her mind. She smiled apology. "There's no trouble. I only wish I knew how to keep errands simple. Korvi travellers just seem so handy with everything."

"Ah. I think it's just that your good mother made bargaining look simple."

That, if Aster was honest with herself, was true.

Briar clung close to Rowstley's leg -- swaying faintly, likely sleeping on her feet at such a late hour.

"Come along," Aster told her, approaching and laying a hand soft on her shoulders. "We need our rest, too."

  
  


Cocooned in bedclothes, her eyes already gluing closed with sleep, Briar asked who that korvi person was. In the plain tone of any child, the tone that wanted an answer made of a few clear words.

A bard, Aster told her. A fellow who wandered around, telling stories and teaching things to people. He told a full dozen stories today, and taught Mother some stories she had never heard before. Tomorrow, Mother would tell Briar a legend, too.

  
  


Aster would muster up some lessons about the land, she resolved silent; Briar had learned plenty of songs and now she needed stories. Aster would try to teach her daughter about the land beyond the endless, stirring fields of polegrass. Perhaps with a tale the good bard had provided in the wind-blown street.

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

In the seasons afterward, Llarez composed a new favourite tale. He had been meaning to patch new tales together more often. After all, he saw new sights in every day he lived, and holding those sights inside himself would never do -- that would be gluttony, he supposed. Gulping life down and declining to share it with anyone.

And so he flew over forests and landed in clearings, the ones edged with brown houses and bustling with green specks of people. Familiar villages and even one new one, a village sprung up only weeks ago and bustling with wild ferrin recently befriended. They were a giving people, aemets. Excellent friends for a traveller to make. Always transfixed by a bard's tales, too, when that bard bothered to flap out to the far reaches of a forest for them. Llarez told his usual stories and learned more names, and stared at the wooden walls of offered lodgings. He cleaned his tonebox, polishing it with a soft rag and pushing the dents out with his thumbs. He needed air, his gut said, so he spent a handful of nights sleeping under indigo sky -- bedded on heaped leaves, listening to the wind guttering through forest clearings. It was a cool night and he felt like a lead statue in the morning, but after stoking his firecasting and rising, he told his story to himself and liked the unity of words on his tongue. Fresh air helped a wanderer tell tales, Llarez was rather thoroughly sure. 

In fondly remembered streets, he untied his barding blanket, leaving his neck cool and bare. He fanned his feathers welcoming and he always told an old legend to warm up: the entire chronicle of the Legend Creatures' births. From Phoenix's first spark catching on dry moss, to Seasu hatching from the smoothest pebble on the bottom of a deep cool lake; from Cicada hatching in the rustling meadow leaves, to the howling winds that carved Barghest out of a desolate cliff face. It was a terribly long tale and it lacked the rise and fall of a proper story, broken up into twelve portions as it was. But no one could argue that the Legend Creatures weren't worth hearing about. Llarez played accompanying rhythms as familiar as his own heartbeat. As the tale wore on, clusters of folk arrived, nudging their children before them. Tell a basic legend and, sure as rain, mothers and fathers would take the chance to have it told for them. 

With an audience gathered and their attention held, Llarez would then tell his new favourite tale. Simply to see how it fared in people's minds. This story began with a lovely young aemet woman who lived in a peaceful town. Her name was Cress -- because Llarez couldn't come out and say Aster, of course, and because he had a memory for flowering plants like a sieve had capacity for water. Cress was a fine enough name. It brought a wholesome meal to mind.

In this story, Cress had a wonderful home and a generous family, blessed with the children they had wished for. Her life shone like the gods themselves had dressed her in luck. Llarez played a quick-paced tune for this part, a rhythm like trotting feet.   
But then, he said, Cress met a strange fellow. A bard who grinned whenever he could. Llarez slowed his claws against the tunebox, letting the rhythm falter and stumble. The bard, he lied, had been searching the land for many eldens -- hundreds of years' worth of storms and calm days -- looking for embers to add to his own fire. People who could kindle new legends in his heart. He found that his tales flowed better when the lovely young Cress was around, and he invited her to travel the land at his side. Cress, being an utterly sensible person, put a hand to her chest with surprise. She said that she had best not leave her home. But she thanked him kindly.  
The bard left town soon enough, carried on a brisk flying wind. But Cress had been made to wonder. She felt a wish to know more about the land, as though that bard had carried Cicada's spark of curiosity and passed it along to her. Cress wondered now about the places outside her village, beyond her well-walked paths. She wondered what the land would be like if she had told the bard yes. Llarez could see Aster clear in his thoughts when he told this part, the possibilities newly hatched and glistening in her wide green eyes. 

Llarez had trouble choosing a middle for his new favourite tale. Sometimes Cress spoke to every plant in the field, and in a way saw the land without ever leaving home. Aemet audiences seemed to like that version, but Llarez didn't think the words sat right. Once, Cress met fire god Fyrian in the street and ran an errand for him, searching out the wandering bard to tell him a message. Llarez didn't like the taste of that middle at all. Too grand by far. 

He spent more time thinking on the matter. In offered homes and in wind-swaying fields, while talking with every person he could find. Once, he went to a shaded forest dell, which a brown-wizened aemet told him was good place for thinking but Llarez found it too cool and still for his blood. A local ferrin came trotting through the undergrowth with mint stalks clamped in her mouth; she paused to consider Llarez and cant her ears sympathetic. After dropping the greens into her hands, she suggested a spot a stone's throw away where Bright poured plenty of warm light down. It was a spot she liked to sit, anypace. Kind of her to stop and share the thought.  
So after settling in that spot of daybright, spreading his toes in the warm gold light, Llarez picked open knots on the Muddle while he thought. Twine pulled free, and strings loosed between his clawtips. And he found himself humming a tune. A tune with a beat, a steady drumming that reminded him of Aster's walking pace. A moderate and sensible pace. Ah, Llarez thought as the story blossomed wider in his head -- here was the inspiration he wanted.

In the next storytelling, Cress began venturing away from her village, one step farther each day until she was crossing hills and dales. Her heart grew with each new sight. And then, one evening, she found the bard before her like they were luck-destined to meet. Yes, Llarez thought the first time he spoke that and tapped out its tune -- this was the right way to spin the story. Cress made the choice to follow her bard friend, to do her wandering with company, and she saw more along the way than she ever thought two eyes could see.

Llarez told that favourite tale a few times more, to add details and watch aemet faces shift in reaction. He added more mention of wind currents: it seemed that aemets simply didn't feel informed if they didn't know how the air was wafting in any given scene. Like they had put a sweet bun in their mouths and found it no sweeter than water -- a surprise and a disappointment. Llarez made the curious wind a stronger figure in the story, a force driving the bard's wings and whispering in Cress's ear. That sat well. The crowds smiled at him and laid meals at his feet.

That was that, then. He had smelted his life's ore into a new story, and burnished it until it shone. Llarez supposed he would talk about Cress the wanderer well into the future; she was a legend now. 

Days passed and months changed. Llarez's throat grew sore on the days he spoke too long, and folk left enough honey and mint on his barding blanket to soothe the affliction. He learned so many aemet names and faces that he didn't even try to count them all; he only found them familiar, these milling people of the plant goddess, these folk who put aside their work and gave the time instead to stories.

Each time Llarez finished Cress's legend, he wondered how much of it was true.


	4. Chapter 4

Aster gave herself more to do in the two years afterward. She composed a new weave pattern and made fine shawls with it. Once Briar was confident in the aemetkind songs of joy and grief, Aster set about telling legends -- few and sparse though they seemed in Aster's memory. She spent nights with Orman and tamped his face into her thoughts; soon enough, she was wiping the birth sac from the face of a new child. This Hane son was named Gareth, the name Orman spoke on a quiet breath and Aster immediately liked.

  
  


Here was Aster Hane growing into her house-leading life, taking strides that fell sure on well-worn traditions. She began to believe herself, on the mornings she walked to the town broodery with a guiding hand on each child's shoulder. It was best that she hadn't indulged any mad impulses, or wandered away down any strange paths. She would carry on weaving and watching her eldest daughter grow, raising the next Hane woman and ensuring that she knew the family ways. None of that had a trade price; it was simply hers to keep.

  
  


She fetched the children back from the broodery one day, when Rowstley was plenty busy cleaning. Walking into the deep treeshade was relaxing; Aster could see why her brother gladly took the daily errand.

Voices rose in greeting as Aster approached, as aemet children sensed her samekind shape parting the still air. The broodery ferrin -- bright-eyed weasel folk, smaller than the aemet children they guarded -- hopped to Aster's feet and reported on the day's activities.

"We had few plums to eat," Dorwin said, "and then painting practice." He flicked an ear contemplatively. "Actually, I think your little nut Briar has a talent for it."

"She has an eye for colour placement," added Flita. "Placement all over everywhere!" She twittered a laugh and stretched tall to give Gareth back, a precious blanket bundle held on short arms.

Aster knelt, hurrying her son close. He was sure asleep -- lulled by the trees' whispering, warmed by the kinship ferrin folk grew as easily as their own fur.

"Thank you, friends."

Aster turned her smile toward Briar and found her standing by red-painted lines on the ground. An evenly spaced group of lines, meeting each other at square angles. It was a clay mimicry of fabric threads. Like the mimicry Aster had scratched into the sand with a stick at the same age. With her heart stinging in the fondest way, Aster laid a praising hand on Briar's shell and felt the girl stretch taller with pride.

Turning back to the ferrin, she said, "And if it isn't much trouble, I've been meaning to ask ... Briar has been thirsty for legends, of late. Do you story the children often?"

Dorwin and Flita grinned at one another.

"Do we story them often?"

"I believe we do," Flita said. "And if you've got a moment to spend, we'd be delighted to story them more!" She gave a fine imitation of a bard's bow; her arm fur made two curtains that nearly resembled wings.

Aster laughed, unable to help herself. Children murmured to one another and gathered closer, clustering together with Briar and turning open faces toward the broodery ferrin. Dorwin and Flita spoke in turn, picking up each other's sentences they told the legend of Juniper and her loyal dog.

  
  


The words pulled a smile onto Aster's face. She remembered Juniper's dog well; even as a child, she had liked the thought of a creature so true-hearted. The ferrin added asides that Aster had never heard in her mother's version of the legend -- small-painted ideas of Juniper brushing the dog's fur until it shone, and stroking that fur while the two of them walked through wind-whipped sand.

  
  


Ferrin spoke of movement and sound in their legends. They mentioned air, the varied pitches of the wind's voice and the brushing of air past whiskers and pelt. But Aster still supposed that this story came to Dorwin and Flita's family through a visiting bard. In the telling of their air-whipped tale, the ferrin were making bard's motions -- sweeping their arms as if performing for the whole of creation, speaking in more lavish tones than Twillhome folk ever did.

Briar and the other children sat enjoying the legend. Gareth napped, oblivious. Noticing every familiar word and every different one, Aster wondered if she was the only one thinking beyond this leaf-wreathed clearing. She wondered what went through her children's minds, and whether they wanted to hear more. They might be holding their own thoughts of vast fields leading away somewhere.

  
  


"A new legend, please," Briar said the next evening. She shone in her eyes when she asked for legends; she was still young enough to prefer listening to speaking.

Winnowing her thoughts, Aster wasn't sure she had any new legends. She had already told the tradesfolk tales she remembered most clearly, the stories of aemet ancestors with clever fingers full of plantcasting. And the tale of aemetkind first meeting plants, giving greetings to their sisters and promising to do no unneeded harm. Aster had also told rough-hewn versions of how the land came to be -- she would wait until the children were older to tell the longer, fuller truths.

If she wished, Aster could make up a tale. Simply spin a new story for Briar to hear. But assembling ideas into a story had never felt right to Aster's heart. She could sense the weight of other folk's presence outside the house, and surely someone else out there could compose life's lessons better than she could.

"I think it's best that you hear about the Creatures again," Aster decided. "So that you'll know them better."

Reluctance twisted Briar's face. She picked Gareth up and placed her brother in the hollow of her crossed legs; he played with his string of paper beads, heedless.

"All right," Briar said. "Could you begin with the Indrick, please?"

That was a fair enough compromise. Aster rearranged the twelve-part story in her head, putting first the moody Indrick who carved riverbank stones. And she began that old, old tale.

As she storied the childen, Gareth mouthed words that caught his ear. Creatures, he said, all but silent. Learning the name and making it a part of his thoughts.

  
  


Aster was restless, she supposed, at the thought of passing on her knowledge. Teaching her experience made it seem final, like a sculpture painted and glazed before it was given away. A finished thing to admire. Aster's twenty years of life didn't seem like a legend worth telling; it had no ending, only young beginnings and a house leader still wondering what the air lacked.

  
  


She wanted new dyes, suddenly, in the next clear-lit morning while she pulled a tunic gentle over Gareth's antennae. She wanted to cloy a new fabric with bright colour. Blue, perhaps. Blue set against a shade of yellow as soft as down feathers. Colours amiable with the muted browns of thatch walls. The idea seized Aster: it would do her good to design a new pattern and focus on its making. She didn't know yet what sort of useful object her design would be, but the idea for that could come later.

  
  


While sorting cotton yarns, measuring quantity with the width of her knuckles, Aster said, "I'll be weaving something today."

"Best of luck untangling it," Orman said on a smile-soft breath. He stretched in preparation for a long day; he was soon gone from the home's air.

  
  


Aster went to the main street, to the two rows of vendor's blankets and the bustling space between. Fellow crafting merchants had no cerulas this day -- only walnut shell and marblefruit root. No blue dye would come from those. Even Indigo the lichen harvester had none of her namesake plant. Aster had an idea and nothing to craft it with, she found as the Great Gem shifted hue. Luck finally came from the Hefton siblings, who pointed down the street for her. Over there, they said, was a traveller. Mentioned something about having dye lichen and some other things to trade.

Wind stirred across Aster's neck, like a god's breathed warning. She walked toward a crowd of Twillhome, the ones circled around a bard. Yellow feathers showed through the aemet colouring; feather edges split the breeze. Aster's heart jerked and she hardly noticed it, warm inside as she was.

"And he knew then that there was too much sadness here," Llarez was saying, "leeching at the people and every effort they made." His tonebox rhythm picked up, the redoubling sound of determination. "He had the ability to take that sadness away. The tingling in his petals told him so."

This was the tale of Legend Creature Mandragora. The lover of stories, the Creature who wandered the land and spread joy. A perfectly appropriate tale for a bard to tell. Aster kept carefully to the back of the audience, and listened; she kept noticing the places Llarez mentioned colour or feeling, instead of the movement of air.

  
  


As the legend drew to a close, some folk laid down payments and drifted away. The remaining faces turned toward each other, discussing. Aster had best stop hiding, she supposed, stepping closer.

As she approached, Llarez lowered a water flask from his mouth. He smiled, leaving the weight of his grey gaze on Aster; he spoke now with a fresher-sounding tongue. "Why, Aster! There you are."

Her will to speak fled. Her legs wished to do the same, full suddenly of a wish to be anyplace else. But, standing there nodding polite, Aster smiled at him and she felt wholly real.

Llarez tipped his head with a slight cascade of feathers. "Would you like to hear a particular legend? I do honour requests."

"Perhaps later," she said, "thank you. But I'm here for a handful of cerulas. The tales around town say you've got some."

"That doesn't sound like a very well-wrought tale." Llarez bent for the trinkets lining his blanket, taking a plum and turning it in his hand, eyeing its skin. "To my mind, tales need an ending. Just imagine it: once, there was a fellow named Llarez who had some lichen. Yes, he certainly did have some lichen sitting in his pouch. And so it was." He laid items into his cargo pouch, adding, "I'd be lucky to receive some street dust in exchange for a tale like that!"

The very idea -- of aemet folk glowering at the poor bard, then kneeling to move a handful of dirt onto his blanket -- brought a laugh leaping up Aster's throat. "Well," she said, "you don't need to fret. I'm here for the actual lichen, not a legend about it."

His grin widened. It was the look of someone who loved his work, Aster thought. Not just the posturing in village streets, but any dance of words, any luminous moment in which he met people. She hadn't seen that look in two years. Time seemed like a distance, a tract of earth she could barely sense the other side of.

Llarez opened his claw-tipped fingers, revealing a thread-tied bundle of cerulas stems in the centre of his palm. "What do you have to trade, friend?"

Aster had some quartz weighing in her tunic pocket. Fine for trade, since the clear stone would hold any casting element introduced to it. More than enough to trade with, she realized with a sudden quickening of her pulse. She lifted the quartz into the open air.

"Actually, good Larez, I'm looking for that lichen, plus a few moments of your service. Carrying water -- plain river water in buckets, that is. Nothing else. If you don't mind."

His grin grew toothier, and he fanned his wings open. "Aster, I mind nothing of the sort."

  
  


They walked the street together, eerily same as the last time Aster had met him. But she explained this time. The fact that she would need extra water to dye her cotton yarn with -- useless words that dried up like clay in her ears.

Suddenly, Llarez asked, "How have you been, Aster?"

"Fine. Bless you for the thought." She fished for more to add; Llarez was staring, like he wanted to hear a legend in return but Aster had so little to tell. "Myself and Orman have received another child."

"Ah, have you? Gods watch both of the little nippers."

A pause was born. Llarez watched the clouds, perhaps thinking -- Aster wanted to ask him if he had anyone, a korvi he followed or fancied or dreamed about.

"You're teaching the children in your local way, I'd imagine," Llarez finally asked.

"Yes. Showing them my trade, and the songs for all occasions. And I've been asking ferrin friends for more stories." How untruthful that felt when Aster had only made the effort hours ago. "I sometimes think I should be telling more tales than I am."

"If you're out of stories, just make up a new one!" Llarez lifted his horns high. "That's how I go about it."

"I'm not much good at inventing new stories, though. New patterns of cloth I can manage, but stories with a meaning running through them ..." She shook her head, airsense blurring. "You told me before that our thoughts need to percolate before we can understand them."

"I might have said something like that," he agreed.

"Where do you get the new thoughts from? Your travels?" Frustration finally felt like enough reason to speak, here where she had been forgiven once already. "I think I might need to do that, Llarez -- go somewhere else. It's like there isn't enough air for me here."

He considered. "It might be worth the wager. Truthfully, I don't think I could stay in one place for so many-- Well. What I mean is, how long have you lived in Twillhome?"

"All of my life. Twenty years."

Everything on Llarez lifted, eyelids and feathers and swaying tailtip. "Only twen-- Ah! What I mean is that you still have time. It's never too late to set out and learn more!"

"It can be too early, though."

Silence thickened. Llarez shifted, as though trying to rub an itch between his wingshoulders. "I suppose so, yes."

  
  


They arrived at Aster's home. Beyond the back wall, Rowstley and the children moved through the field grass, likely picking dead plant stalks and tending to the live ones. Their movement was two stone-throws away, distant enough to be strange eddies of wind if Aster told herself so. Inside the walls, leftover fire heat huddled, and the water pails had a convenient need to be filled. Llarez glanced about to reacquaint himself.

"I told you about my first time trying to travel," he asked, "didn't I? Well, if there's more you'd like to know, do ask. I haven't got anything I'm ashamed to speak about!"

How lucky he was. Aster passed him three pails, swallowing her own thoughts. "I think I might like to travel. Out past the plains."

"With your family?"

"No." Guilt lanced her. She hurried to say, "That is ... I love them. I do. I would never want to betray Orman, or Briar or Gareth. Or leave Rowstley to sort everything out of the chaff. But--"

Once in the daylight, she held her tongue. The neighbour's cousin passed by, waving a hand, and Aster spent a moment returning the greeting with a hurried-on smile.

"Well," she said low, turning back to Llarez -- his gaze weighed heavy, eyes wide. "I don't think I've seen enough, really. I try to provide for the children out of what I know-- I try to come up with landly things to teach them and there's only my own childhood, and a little weaving and these scant years I've been learning to run a house of my own. Do you know what I mean?"

"You never got to learn for yourself," Llarez murmured.

"Yes, that's it." It sounded so dreadfully selfish, hanging there in the air.

"You know," he said, "I don't believe I know anyone else who's come to a decision like that. Met plenty of folk who wanted to travel someday, perhaps. None who saw that they needed to do it."

"Truly?"

"Well, if I do know anyone else like that," he added, "they haven't confided as much. Aster, I think you do need to get out. Go on a journey." He cut the air with his hand, waving toward the fields and mountains. "Just pack a pouchful of things and go one day! Follow the wind!"

"Alone?"

"Absolutely! Ah, well. If your kind does that."

If Aster had a fiery heart and wings to unfurl, she surely would have travelled. Maybe if she had been born the child of a different god, she wouldn't have such gnawing thoughts of wanting to be somewhere else: seeing great distances would be a simple truth for her.

"Hardly," she murmured. She couldn't recall anyone in the Hane lineage who had been a wanderer. "I'm not a mage, or a forager who goes out into the wild, or ... any far-ranging sort of aemet."

She expected a spluttered contradiction from Llarez. But he was quiet, rearranging his wings on his back. Perhaps turning over the differences in his head. "I still think there's some good to be had in getting out," he said. "Getting some air, shall we say. Would a companion help?"

Yes, she was about to say but her breath stuck in her throat. "What are you asking?"

"Whether you'd like to wander with me, of course!" He beamed, swelling with his own warmth.

Yes, Aster's heart said again. Yes, she would like to follow in this fellow's wake, to see where he wandered and watch the shape of his face as he saw new sights. And then hot guilt drowned all that -- because Aster led a smaller Hane house; she had daily ways to uphold; if she left, she would leave behind her gathered loved ones. How could she find that acceptable for even a moment?

Arriving at her Hane doorway, she beckoned Llarez inside. "The water pails go-- Well, I suppose you remember."

Llarez did remember, already moving past her with a stirring of air. He bent at the knees and set his tail-held pail on the ground. "Here," he said, hurrying his hands free of the other two pails, scrabbling then at his cargo pouch and pulling a ball of string out. "I still have this old soothing thing!"

The Muddle barely matched Aster's memory. It was smaller now, frayed in more places, its knots made of different assortments of string. Llarez came near and pressed the ball into her hands.

"Pick at this and maybe it'll help you with your thoughts," Llarez said. "It's getting close to the end, I think. There's a spot you can feel a hard edge under the yarn. A stone, perhaps, or something metal!"

Aster pressed her fingertips inward and felt the presence, something more solid than the string layered over it. She looked at travel-frayed knots, and imagined picking them open one by one. "You haven't finished opening your gift, hmm?"

"I met a fellow last month who worked a great strip off it," Llarez offered. "An older ferrin, he's as smart as any crow! Ah, but I haven't made much progress. Only a few knots at a time when I have something to muddle over, myself."

"I'll give it a few moments. Thank you, Larez."

"Do let me know." He blinked intent. "About the travelling, I mean. Well, tell me about the Muddle if you solve that, but I was thinking of the travelling, to be clear as air."

She hoped she could find the courage, in some moment soon to come; Aster could sense a pressure front of everything she imagined and feared.

"You're staying at the inn?"

"For tonight, at least," Llarez said, nodding.

Aster removed the cerulas from her pocket, and put the Muddle's bulk in its place. "That quartz wasn't too small, was it? For two knuckles of cerulas and three pails of water carried?"

"Oh, don't fuss! It feels plenty large to me and anypace, I recall a fellow who wanted a quartz just like this. I'll get a good trade for it." He patted his cargo pouch, a gentle mashing of its air and objects. He smiled broad. "Let me stop back later and do one more task for you, then I'll call this a settled trade. A fetching errand or a moment of helping Orman in his field, or any such thing you'd like!"

Llarez would need his Muddle back, too. The excuses mounded together, a weight growing less petty by the heartbeat -- it seeming ever more like a practical arrangement.

"All right," Aster said. "That's good of you."

"No trouble," Llarez replied. "I've got plenty of favours to give!"

  
  


This would be a night of mud-caked innards, Aster knew as she sat at her loom. This would be a night she made a choice. Tonight would stand alone in her truthful memory, just like her final night sleeping in the main Hane home. And the night she decided to accept Orman as her mate. And the two nights she laid awake thinking about the new child inside her. Each thought was a tree, deep-rooted and enduring enough to tie a life to. But as Aster tried the cerulas stems between her fingers -- and found them potent enough to smudge her skin blue -- and she couldn't regret what she was about to do. She had never begun a weaving project like this one.

  
  


As dusk fell, Orman fixed a plain meal and Rowstley put the children to bed, because Aster said she was going to carry on working. Her family always left her a gracious amount of air to work in. She boiled the cerulas together with cotton yarn until the steam felt right. Then she laid the cotton into a bath of oak tannin and shale salt, a recipe she knew better than any food.

  
  


Night fell purple through the ceiling smoke hole; the Hane family tucked into their beds and grew still. Don't strain yourself, Orman advised Aster, and the wordsounds stuck in her ears.

The only sitting figure in her home, surrounded by candlelight and peacefully curling air, Aster blotted the moisture from her new-dyed cotton. She didn't want to wait for this to dry. A growing idea in her bones told her to hurry. Still noticing blue smudges on her fingertips, she laid base threads into the loom frames. And she began to weave.

When this piece was finished, Aster would find herself in a new time. A sectioning off of herself and her truths, split like sand with a stick dragged through it. When these cotton strands wove together into a large enough fabric, Aster Hane would have chosen whether to walk away from her family. A walk, she thought and felt and hoped. Only a walk. Brief and light-hearted, with no storms in its wake.

How could she hope for that, she sighed inside her gust-blown head? She didn't remember her mother walking away, or her grandmother. They were always there, tilling the traditions that all other Hanes grew from. They spoke the wise words that fixed any trouble. They showed Aster and her brothers how to set a hearth fire, and how to ripen fruit with their innate plantcasting. None of that could be wrought from afar. None of that could be sent back on messenger's wings.

Aster slowed her motions. The loom was well oiled -- Orman oiled it this year and he would oil it every year afterward -- but its smooth, silent repetitions still stirred air.

Imagine Aster sending back word and hoping it would be enough. She had faith that Llarez would run a message if she asked. She imagined watching him fly away, day's gemlight shining on his golden feathers. A wanderer like him would have well-muscled wingshoulders, a solid bunching of strength while he took off.

  
  


Flight was the trouble, Aster eventually decided. She tied off the last waft threads, looked for her trimming knife and took distracted moments to find it. She had some sort of fixation on korvi flight and the freedom that came with it. She would have to get past that, or at least make peace with it. Whether or not she went for this walk of hers.

If she asked Llarez what to do, a wry thought supposed, he would tell Aster to just try. To simply enjoy whatever she wanted. She considered asking him and hearing him speak that advice again. Such a small request seemed within reason: after all, she had once asked him to oil her loom, whatever she had meant by that.

  
  


The blue cloth cinched together, one needle stitch at a time. Adding a carrying strap took some careful moments. There wasn't as much decorative stitching as Aster would have liked; her eyes were losing the strength to focus.

Orman stirred and shifted, and sat out of bed -- an awareness that sharpened Aster's blurring airsense back to a point. His movement felt sweeping in the middle of such a quiet home.

"Dear," Orman asked in rusty voice, "have you been working all night?"

The light through the smokehole was indeed morning light, more yellow than purple. It was a sight that made Aster's careful thoughts scatter to nothing. She could claim a sudden inspiration, like the Cicada himself had landed on her hands. But Aster hated the taste of that lie and she hadn't even spoken it yet.

"I thought we had one-- These-- Well. This is a travelling pouch. For me."

Orman stiffened. He said, "You've made plans ...?"

She held up the pouch -- eyeing the blue-dyed weave, checking that all hung straight between her fingers. She laid it back into her lap, heavy-hearted. "It's not a plan, really. I haven't thought it through enough to call it a plan. That bard fellow is back in the village. Larez of Arkiere -- you recall him, don't you?"

"Yes."

"He--" Oh, how to put this mess into words. "He gave me ideas, that time we first met him. Stories where folk wandered and learned things. And it made me think-- I'd just like to see more of the land. That much I know."

Crossing the expanse of floor, Orman walked on silent bare feet. He sat beside her. He curled his hands into spined balls against his forehead, and after a drawn breath, said, "It's like that grass field of yours."

Shock chilled inside Aster's shell. "I told you that?"

"Once. It latched onto my mind, the thought of you looking out into the wind like that ... I thought maybe the gods were trying to show you something you couldn't parse right then."

She truly hadn't remembered sharing that with her husband. Maybe it had slipped from her mouth as a trinket, some shiny bit she thought didn't matter. But trust Orman to mind the small things and see if they would grow.

"I didn't know what I wanted," Aster said small. "I'm not even sure I know now."

He shifted closer, their shell edges touching, his work-toughened hand finding hers. "It's fine. You know ... I thought it would be a decent bargain if we spent some time seeing the land. If you'd like, that is. I planted some more corn than I had first planned for -- thought it'd be a little extra to trade with if we went off journeying sometime."

"You want to travel, too?"

He huffed, a warm gust between the two of them. "Not especially. I only thought you'd like it."

That pulled a laugh from Aster's throat, and stung hot at her eyes. "Oh, Orman. You'd never have to do that for me!"

"I reasoned to myself that I might find new corn varieties," he declared. "Or fine tools. If we went toward the Volcano, that is, and saw some metalwork."

"I don't know where I mean to go ... Only somewhere else. I didn't even ask Llarez where he's headed to next."

Orman curled his hand tighter around hers. He was quiet, his thumb running up one of Aster's curved thumbnails and back down again. She should have worried, she supposed. About what Orman was thinking and whether he sensed anything on that misconceived night two years ago. But she felt no fear now.

"Who'd have thought that blazing fellow would lure you away," Orman decided. "He'll be a good travel companion. Keep you entertained ... I'll ask one thing, though, Aster. Come back."

"Oh, I'd never," she blurted. Her heart burned at the thought of such disloyalty. "You and the children-- Please don't think I'd leave this house!"

"It wouldn't be much of a Hane house without our head Hane," he agreed. "I suppose what I mean is, come back happy."

That, Aster could promise. Scooting closer to Orman's solid presence, closing her eyes against the winds of his breath, she said, "I'll try."

  
  


She was wrapped in downy sleep the moment she laid head to blankets. Daylight knifed down through the smoke hole now, and the rustling of her husband and brother and children broke barely through the quiet. The hot motion of breakfast steam blended with Aster's own calm pulse.

  
  


Through snugness and dark, voices pulled her back.

"... just got to sleep," Orman was saying. "She was up late working on a project."

"Ah, of course!" A lively voice, hushed careful. "Pardon my stopping by this early, I only thought she might be awake ..."

"Larez ..."

Aster only sensed the taut silence after it was gone.

"If I might ask ... Have you and Aster made some plans?"

Motion. A tall, broad person entering and pulling the door curtain closed behind him. His tail was a feather-thatched curl in the air, a detail pulling Aster's focus fore and back.

Llarez spoke low and sincere. "To be true as earth ... Whatever she'd like to see," and then something growled with faint frustration. Then the youth in his voice was back with, "but I mean none of you good folk any harm, I'll swear that to great Barghest if he'd like me to testify."

Orman shifted. His hand moved up and raked into his hair. Aster heard "... Wish I had sensed this coming. Maybe when she took to you, that night you fixed her loom. I thought..." A pause. An indistinct motion from Orman.

Llarez stood waiting. No air moved but his breathing, not one hackling feather.

"... Give it no mind," Orman decided. "I just know she's been thinking. Not good for a person to think too much."

"There's something to be said for that!"

"If you can bring her where she wishes to go, then--" and he murmured something as kind as fertile earth.

"That's good of you, fellow," Llarez replied. "Truthfully, you won't regret it."

Aster hoped that was true. She heard no more talk from her husband or her guide; she sank under more layers of sleep.

  
  


She left the next day -- after preparing Briar and Gareth for the fact, and bringing two large loaves of corn bread to the broodery ferrin as thanks forepaid. There was nothing else to do in Twillhome except to turn away. The wind stirred in the leaves, whispering about change. Aster watched the treetops in churning motion, then she let out a sigh and looked to Llarez, who stood attentive by her side.

"I think we can depart now. Why such a smile?"

He only smiled more. "I'll need to change my tales, you see."

"Because we're leaving?"

"Ah, well. I change them all the time. Give it no mind." He looked to the clouds, considering the wind, and he seemed to store his thought away for later.

  
  


Aster and Llarez walked together, slower than before since there were no errands to be done. They passed by pathways walked smooth by foragers and farmhands. They followed cart wheel tracks until the movement and voices of neighbours were only a memory.

Here before Aster was another polegrass field, swaying with the rolling presence of wind. More thousands of leaves than a mortal being could ever count. More land beyond it than a Hane had ever seen with her own eyes.

Llarez's wings opened, fluttered brief and settled against his back. Aster wondered how much he wished to fly; maybe the wind spoke to him, too, only in a different tongue.

"It's a good time to head off, I think," he said. "A sky like this don't show up every day of the year!"

"What grows beyond here? Beyond this field, that is."

"Eh?" Llarez canted his head. He preened mane feathers that stirred like grass themselves. "More fields, I believe. Shorter grass. It'll be easy walking even if we head off in a direction where there isn't a trodden path. Ah, and daisies! There's a field thick with daisies a few furlongs from here. I didn't land to see it, myself, but I'm told there are a thousand flutterflies if there's a single one!"

"Flutterflies." Those were ordinary enough. Something Aster might look at while designing fabric in her head. "All right. I'd like to see that."

"After that, I thought we should travel west. The Volcano towns have a thousand sights to see and that's on a calm day!"

Rumour said there were festivals in the Volcano tunnel-towns. Festivals with music and dancers and meals with plenty of onion in them. Enveloping warmth in the air, too.

"I'd like that," Aster said. She followed alongside as Llarez turned toward open fields. "I'd especially like to see the Volcano wall tapestries. And see some dancers -- are there many dancing folk?"

"Plenty of them! Especially since the Lifedancing is coming soon, folk will be practicing new routines all about town. There'll be so many shows you'll-- Oh, speaking of which." Llarez settled suddenly. "There are some provocative folks among the Hotrock artisans. Talented people they are, truthfully, but a large portion of them don't mince their meanings like we far-ranging bards do. Just something to pay mind to."

That explained the pause Llarez had taken before telling Aster about the double meaning of looms, that moment of arranging his words polite. Doubt pooled in her stomach. "Are there any other terms I should know? Ones that are ... are an invitation, like talking about oiling looms?"

"Now, Aster. That was a fluke of a chance. I've never known it to cause anyone trouble before." He turned a thoughtful gaze up to the clouds. "Although I don't know many weavers with literal looms to be oiled ... Well, if you hear something perplexing, I'd be glad to teach you about it!"

She shouldn't have hoped for a list of instructions. Maybe korvi didn't pay so much mind to differences or embarassments. Maybe they didn't flush at such thoughts, full of fire as they already were.

"Well," Aster said. "I only hope this wandering doesn't lead me into trouble."

"You don't proposition every korvi you meet, do you?"

The thought was a shock -- and she shot a look at Llarez, whose grin weakened only a little. She couldn't bring her tongue to snap at him. And as she looked at the mischief shining in Llarez's long face, she supposed she could appreciate the joke.

"I try not to make too many offers, no." She certainly wouldn't be making a habit of this.

"Then you don't have any need to worry, truthfully."

Imagine Aster being so imbalanced that she clung to any offered dragon hand. She sighed. "No, Larez. You're the only one tempting me off anywhere."

They carried on through the breeze-wafting day. Hotrock Volcano was a black smudge ringed with clouds, distant through the undulating vastness of grass stalks and flower tops.

Llarez asked her then, "What was your promise? To Orman, that is. Forgive me for wedging my nose in, I've simply never heard the exact words of a couple of aemet folk proposing and, really, I suppose it matters."

Memory wrenched Aster's heart. Years ago, in a glad and shining day like this one, she had tried to plan her life's path and maybe, possibly failed. She bit her lip.

"I promised Orman to be a sure support for him, and to grow a family together. He promised me faith and hard work. And then we exchanged willow twigs and swore to great Verdana that this would be truth for two lifetimes."

"Two lifetimes? Oh, lived at the same time. I see." Llarez hummed thoughtful. "But neither of you promised to stay put and wither from boredom? Or to deny yourselves going out and seeing something you'd like to look upon."

It was the spirit of the words, Llarez, she thought. She had always presumed as much. Aemet folk didn't need to swear fidelity because fidelity was the essence of sharing a life: the promise that this effort mattered, that this life-pact had value even if its lustre faded and its passions calmed. Such a basic truth shouldn't need to be spoken.

Llarez was quiet for a sticky moment. Aster could airsense the shifting of his tongue inside its cage of teeth.

"Well, Aster," he said, "I don't mean to chip into a happy bond. But I meant my promise, too -- that you can ask me anything and I'd be delighted to provide. Or answer. Or any other way I might do something. Ah, you catch my meaning, don't you?"

The whole trouble of this was finding the right words to place next to feelings, the right way of laying lives and hearts across one another so they wove together smooth. Aster knew entirely well what Llarez meant. The truth was that she was already seeing new sights and feeling new winds. He was beside her to provide, and back in Twillhome town, Orman was beside her as well. This was a weave Aster hadn't thought of -- more matted than she would have liked, more knot-clumped at its edges and difficult to put a name to. But she found now, standing in a travelling wind, that she didn't mind. She was full inside, full of the blossoming hope that this would work.

"I understand," she said. "Come here, if you would."

Llarez blinked at her, and then melted with understanding. He beamed. He held his arms open and swept Aster into a firm hug. Contact wrapped them far closer than Aster had expected -- she was within lean-muscled arms, her forehead pillowed on a scarf made of barding blanket, a curtain of feathers all around. The surprise of it melted honey-sweet. Happily, she had the nerve to work her hands past stiff wing quills and into the softer plumage of his muscle-thick back.

"It's good of you to help," Aster said. Her own breath coursed away over Llarez's skin.

"I couldn't mind if I tried." His grinning mouth rested against Aster's cheek, and his exhaled breath ran a shiver through her. "Now, then." He took hold of Aster's shoulders, thumbs brushing thoughtful over the edges of her shell, and held her away to regard her. He glowed with his own smiling, a joy-bright lantern. "If we make quick time by feet, we can reach Whiling village and see about sleeping on bed mats tonight. Unless you'd like to sleep under a dark-cast sky? I can blow a little smoke so the hunting creatures won't trouble us any."

She could follow the wind and see whatever she wished, under the fiery protection of a korvi friend. Now Aster was simply being spoiled.

"Thank you, Larez. Let's just see how the trip goes, shall we?"

  
  


That night, under the purple bowl of the sky, Aster sensed the vast plains full of grass until each leaf's motion was predictable. Not familiar -- not yet -- but less strange than they had first seemed. She shifted her folded legs and considered Llarez's peaceful-breathing shape in the darklight. Sleep wouldn't come to her so easily, not when she was full of tumult and truth.

With a blanket tucked about her, with Llarez warm at her back, Aster pulled the Muddle ball from its pouch. She held it and felt this reality, too. Then she placed fingernails to string. The knots, after all, were there for the untying.


End file.
